News

SEN's news page is dedicated to sharing stories that are relevant to our work and approach to reform efforts.

Radical change for struggling schools? It’s reliably doable.

By Mitchell Chester and John WhiteDate: March 7, 2017

In education, few questions matter more than what to do for students stuck in enduringly terrible schools.

Such schools produce more dropouts than graduates; they are associated with violence, community disorganization, and blunted futures for children. Bringing dramatic change to such schools has rightly become a national priority, in part because of the federal government’s multi-billion-dollar investment in School Improvement Grants, or SIG.

Educator Hopes to Bring Brooklyn Latin-Inspired Charter School to Bronx

By: Eddie SmallDate: January 4, 2017

Greg Rodriguez, an assistant principal at the UFT Charter School in East New York, hopes to have the Academy for Collegiate Excellence Charter School ready to open for the 2018-19 school year. It would be located somewhere in District 8, which includes neighborhoods such as Hunts Point and Soundview, and serve grades nine through 12, teaching a total of 500 students by its sixth year.

When year after year schools try to improve but do not, dramatic intervention is urgently needed.

At a time when social mobility, income inequality and joblessness for the under-educated dominate the national discussion, it is notable that our Presidential candidates have largely avoided talking about elementary and secondary education. In America today, a child raised in a family with earnings in the bottom quartile nationally is six times less likely to graduate from college than is a child whose family earns in the top quartile. Important as it is that candidates address the effect of college debt on low-income students, the odds for poor kids will not improve without change in the elementary and secondary schools that equip students for college in the first place.

Measures of Last Resort Assessing Strategies for State-Initiated Turnarounds

By: Ashley Jochim, Center on Reinventing Public EducationDate: November 2016

The report identifies various mechanisms states can use to intervene in schools and dives deep into nearly a dozen recent turnarounds in eight states. It maps the five common turnaround approaches: state support for local turnaround, state-authorized turnaround zone, mayoral control, school takeover, and district takeover. And it analyzes what is known about state-initiated turnaround in all its forms.

School Empowerment Network

SEN believes that even districts facing the greatest challenges are home to talented educators who, when properly recognized, organized, and developed, have great potential to lead transformative change in their schools or create new high-performing options.